Film Forward brings ‘Beasts’ to appreciative PCSS audience

By Mike Lange
Staff Writer

    GUILFORD — Producer Michael Gottwald asked the student audience how many would stay home if a major disaster hit their community. Only a few hands were raised.
    He then asked how many would evacuate. Most of the other hands went in the air. “After you see this movie, I might ask the same question,” Gottwald said.

    Piscataquis Community Secondary School in Guilford was one of only four domestic location chosen for this year’s “Film Forward,” an international touring program designed to enhance greater cultural understanding through movies. The screening of “Beasts of the Southern Wild” on Oct. 4 was arranged by Annalee Libby, a Monson native who now teaches in the Hermon school system.
    Gottwald, a Richmond, Va. native, is one of the producers of “Beasts,” an award-winning film shot, as he put it, “in the middle of nowhere … the most isolated part of Louisiana.”
    “Beasts” was unusual in many respects. “No one in this film had ever acted before,” Gottwald said. Quvenzhane Wallis, who was 6 when the film production began, was the youngest person ever nominated for an Academy Award for her role as Hushpuppy. The person who played her father, Wink, in the movie, Dwight Henry, owned a small bakery and almost changed his mind about working in the film because he was relocating his business.
    “Beasts of the Southern Wild” focuses on the relationship between Hushpuppy and Wink, who live in a ramshackle home on the delta known as the Bathtub where residents eke out a living by fishing, shrimping or raising a few farm critters.
    A huge storm hits the community, but the inhabitants resist leaving. As they try to rebuild their community, the salt water brought in from the ocean on the heels of the storm has basically killed everything in its path.
    There are fires, fights, heavy drinking, a few laughs and lot of tears interspersed with fantasy images of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. It also has a sad, but predictable ending as Wink succumbs to an illness surrounded by Hushpuppy and her extended family.
    Gottwald said that the filming took place over a three years period and was adapted from a play (Juice and Delicious) by Lucy Alibar. “It was about her experience growing up in rural Georgia when her dad got sick and the emotional experience she went through,” Gottwald said. “Then Benh (Zeitlin, the director) had been thinking of a story about a bunch of holdouts – people who stayed in a perilous environment, even after a disastrous storm. Those two ideas sort of melded together.”
    Students interviewed after the movie praised it and said they’d recommend it to their friends.
    “I thought it was a really good movie, and I learned something. I’m going to appreciate my family more. After Hushpuppy lost her father, it reminded me that it could happen to anyone,” said Brendan Gleason of Parkman.
    Jacob Campbell said that the movie “made me think. I liked the way they got the message across that she (Hushpuppy) had to take care of her own. She was outstanding.”
    Megan Woodard of Guilford said that movie “was really good. There were some very emotional parts to it. I think there were some things you can learn from it.”
    Holly Bergeron of Parkman agreed, “There are some people who are so attached to their homes and they’ll just stick it through in a disaster, even through death,” she said. “It’s sad, but true.”